One USDA scientist went so far as to claim that there has never been a documented case of food-borne illness from eating fermented vegetables.

Another day it occurred to me that time as we know it doesn't exist in a lawn, since grass never dies or is allowed to flower and set seed. Lawns are nature purged of sex or death. No wonder Americans like them so much.

There are things we know and things we don't know about food. But there are certain basic things we do know, and that's what I've tried to build these rules on.

When chickens get to live like chickens, they'll taste like chickens, too.

You have to draw lines between being a journalist and an activist.

What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick!

Fairness forces you - even when you're writing a piece highly critical of, say, genetically modified food, as I have done - to make sure you represent the other side as extensively and as accurately as you possibly can.